


Are you Looking at the Stars Tonight?

by twentysomethingwerewolf



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, Grieving, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash, Schmoop, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, healthy coping mechanism, inability to cope with loss, minor character background suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 06:50:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2841935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twentysomethingwerewolf/pseuds/twentysomethingwerewolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The weight of Derek’s jacket nothing compared to the weight of the world that Stiles carried around on his shoulders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Are you Looking at the Stars Tonight?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [werewolvesangelsandhunters.tumblr.com](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=werewolvesangelsandhunters.tumblr.com).



> I was reassigned my Sterek secret santa after work for 15K words and something like, three weeks before the deadline. And the assignment I was reassigned to had literally NOTHING TO DO with my original assignment so it had to be completely scratched. I fit in the biggest part of the request, to have people be concerned about the wrong person and to completely miss that Stiles was grieving, but I totally skipped everything else. It was way too detailed of a request. Sorry.

When Derek Hale was twelve years old he had fallen off of a cliff.

The fall would have kill someone else, someone human, easily. He had broken nearly every bone in his body and cracked his skull to pieces. When he finally landed in a heap on an overhang, Laura leagues above him screaming and howling with fear, he had been completely immobile. Even with his werewolf healing, he had faded in and out of consciousness from the pain alone. The overhang was too narrow for anyone to attempt to climb down to him, and so he had lay there healing, alone, for three days until he could finally stand again long enough to tie the rope around his waist that his mother had tossed down to him so they could hoist him back up to safety.

Days like this made the pain of that long weekend seem insignificant.

From the loft’s kitchen, he could hear the sound of the coffee maker running. It gurgled pleasantly and when he inhaled he could smell the grounds. They were high quality, which meant it was Peter who was puttering around. Isaac still used Folgers, even though it had the heavy taste of chemicals that Derek couldn’t tolerate.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Peter said quietly from the kitchen, but Derek heard his uncle just fine.

He just chose to ignore him anyway.

Rolling over, he pulled the blankets over his head, and wondered where his family would be if he had not survived the tumble off of the sheer face of that mountain.

 

It was the McCalls at the grocery store, two hours later.

Scott’s eyes widened as Melissa’s narrowed. Derek couldn’t blame the woman for being suspicious of him; he represented the darkness that had encompassed her sons life. He’d be suspicious of him too, even without the multiple murder charges.

“Uh,” Scott began eloquently, and Derek lifted a hand.

“I don’t want to interrupt.” He said. He did not have to be a werewolf to recognize the platitudes that lived on the tip of Scott’s tongue. He knew what he would say already: I’m sorry for your loss. How are you holding up? Are you okay? Empty words of comfort did nothing for Derek.  
They never did.

He pushed his cart passed them, but Melissa stilled him with a hand over his jacket. He paused, and looked back.

“Son,” she said quietly, and there was sincere pity written into the lines of her face.

If anything, that was worse.

He bolstered himself.

“Your mother would be proud of you,” she said, and Derek felt himself quiver down to the core of his being. “Don’t ever forget that. You’ve saved these kids so many times. Thank you.”

Derek looked away, ashamed. “I didn’t save all of them,” he said, and walked away before she had a chance to offer him more words, before she could see how wet his eyes had grown.

He’d never know if his mother would be proud of him.

He had killed her.

 

Derek knew what he had to do. He knew where he had to go. He had known all day, really, but had taken the long road to where he needed to be.

Pulling up to the gates in his dead sister’s car, Derek gathered his mother’s favorite flowers and trekked up the sloping, grassy hill of the cemetery solemnly. He approached the mausoleum where the ashes of his family – his whole family – remained, where they had rested for eight years.

Eight years to the day.

“Hey mom,” Derek said as he arranged the flowers in a vase in front of her entombment. “It’s been a while…”

 

And so Derek talked. He talked to his dead family about everything that had happened since he had returned to Beacon Hills. And it was…nice. He and Laura had left right after the funeral for New York and he had not had either the time nor the inclination to visit since he had returned. It just held too many painful memories. The Hale Mausoleum was well maintained, though. There were flower’s in front of Peter’s wife and infant daughter’s tombs, so Derek didn’t have to wonder who had been taking care of it in his absence.

When he walked out into the sunshine, he felt… good. Lighter. As though a weight that he had been carrying around had been lifted off of him. He promised himself that he would be a better son to them in death than he had been in life, and would visit more often.

His hand was on the handle of the camaro when suddenly he heard something in the cemetery. The pitter patter of a too quick heartbeat, and the smell of someone familiar.

But what was Stiles doing here? And on today of all days?  
Derek wandered towards where he could hear Stiles and saw him, ripping furiously at the grass in front of a tombstone. His heart was racing and even without his senses, Derek had no trouble determining that he was filled with anxiety. Derek raced to be by his side.

Stiles was mumbling under his breath, something unintelligible, and Derek reached out to still him.

“What?” Stiles barked at him, and then stilled. “Oh,” he said quietly, and then, “it’s you.”

Derek took in the grave and was unsurprised at who was resting there.

“There were these weeds,” Stiles complained, more subdued. “I thought that the groundskeeper would take care of it, but there are these weeds everywhere, and if I don’t pull them out at the roots then they’ll just overtake it, and…”

It was obvious that Stiles was on the verge of a panic attack, and so Derek dropped to his knees beside him and did the only thing he could do. He began to pull the dandelions out at the roots beside him.

“Come here often?” Derek asked when Stiles had been quiet. It was never a good thing when Stiles was quiet, he had learned.

Stiles heart beat double time, but when he spoke, he spoke in a steady voice. “I used to. I used to come here all the time. With dad, without, on the weekends… now it’s just special occasions.”

“What’s the occasion?” Derek asked. He knew why it was an occasion for him, but he could not think of any other reason to be in the graveyard.

“It’s the anniversary of her death.”

Derek froze, and turned to face Stiles slowly, but Stiles was still engrossed in his task, pulling at the weeds.

“It’s okay if you didn’t know; most people don’t. I mean, the sheriff’s wife killing herself was kind of eclipsed, when there was a fire that took out most of a family the same day.” Stiles’ words were biting, but instead of sounding sarcastic and venomous, he just sounded tired.

“She…” Derek hadn’t know. How could he have? “Stiles, I didn’t-“

“She wasn’t crazy,” Stiles said, not listening to Derek. He was staring at his mother’s tombstone, staring beyond it. “She wasn’t crazy. That’s what people used to say after she died but she wasn’t crazy, she wasn’t, she was just sick.”

Derek’s hands were a soothing anchor at his back as he rubbed, cradling Stiles close to him like he was something very precious.

“She wasn’t unstable or paranoid. She wasn’t dissociative or delusional. She didn’t… she didn’t display any homicidal tendencies. She didn’t really impose any means of self mutilation or harbor borderline personality. The only person she was ever a danger to was herself, and she had a system in place, you know? Some days were worse than other, but she got by. She took her meds and she was fine. She had her job, and she had dad and me, and she was happy. But then one day that wasn’t enough. One day it just wasn’t enough. One day I... I should’ve… I should have…” Whatever else he was going to say was cut off with a sob. In a fit of solidarity Derek tugged on his arms and Stiles allowed himself to be enveloped in his embrace. He clutched at Derek’s shirt until the fabric was balled up in his fists and he wept, fat angry tears that he had kept inside himself for so long.

“And then suddenly she was just gone. Everyone said she killed herself, and they said it like it was this huge disappointment, like she was letting everyone down, but she didn’t. She didn’t let anyone down, and she didn’t kill herself. She was sick, and her disease killed her.”

It was cold when his mother died. Fuck, it had been right before Christmas. Suicide rates where so much higher at that time of year; Stiles remembered, because he had researched it when she had passed. It had helped to make it seem less personal, and more real. It had been a cold day and all that Stiles had wanted to do was retreat into himself. He had been eleven. The day that she had killed herself, as soon as the police cleared the scene and the EMTs drove away with the empty body that had once belonged to his mother, Stiles had cleaned the house from top to bottom. He had wiped down every wall, emptied every trashcan and discarded nearly everything that belonged to him. Everything that was not important.

He scrubbed and he mopped and he closed all of the curtains and unplugged all of the clocks and took the phone off of the hook. He changed his sheets and lay down in his bed and he was the one who was crazy, the way everyone had said his mother was. He was the one that should have been making everyone worry. He was the one that should have been locked up and tended to. He should have been analyzed and restrained and medicated, because unlike his gentle and loving mother, he had meant harm to everyone alive and breathing.

But of course, no one ever knew that they had been in danger. Not his father, who withdrew inside of himself. Who had thrown himself head first into the Hale Fire case and hadn’t allowed himself a single quiet moment to reflect on what he had lost, not even for his grieving son.

Not the person who wrote the report on her death, who wrote when she had ‘expired’ like she was an old carton of milk at the back of your fridge that you just forgot about until it was chunky and rotten.

Not the funeral director, who painted her face and made sure she was wearing long sleeves, so no one would see where she had unzipped her flesh at her wrists until everything beautiful inside of her had bleed out into a bathtub of tepid water.

Not the kids that laughed in the park near their house or the birds that sang outside of his window or even the sun, the sun that continued to rise even though the whole world should have ended when his mother did.

No one ever knew that they had been in danger because no one had ever asked.

If they had, they would have discovered that the harm that Stiles wanted to cause to everyone else was secondary only to the harm that he wanted to cause on himself.

For long moments, Derek said nothing. He just held on to Stiles and he knew, selfishly, that he really wasn’t alone. Not anymore. He had his pack and his new life and yes, he even had Stiles. The only person who could ever really understand.

“For a long time I wished that I had died with my family,” Derek admitted, holding tightly onto Stiles as though if he were to let him go, Stiles would vanish into the ground along side his mother. “And in a way, I did. I was dead for a long time, it was just that no one knew it. I stopped going to school, Laura and I had to try to make ends meet in New York, and there were a bunch of part time jobs I kept losing, but I wasn’t there,” he admitted quietly. “Not really.”

“Why did you come back?” Stiles asked.

Why had Derek come back, he wondered. It was a good question. Why had he turned around in the cemetery when he had heard Stiles? Why had he interrupted what had been an obviously private moment of grief?

Why had he come back to Beacon Hills?

Why had he come back to himself, when all he wanted to do was be in the ground with his family?

He was quiet for a long moment before he finally spoke.

“I think it is what my mother would have wanted.”

It was getting chilly now, now that the sun was starting to go down. Derek shrugged off his jacket and placed the heavy weight on Stiles’ shoulders and sat down in the grass next to him. The weeds were strewn about where they had ripped them from the grave and it was getting dark but Derek was going to stay there.

He was going to stay by this loyal, little boy’s side the way that he deserved. The way that Stiles had always stayed by his.

“Do you…” Stiles said quietly, and then once more, more firmly. “Do you think that there is an afterlife?”

Derek smiled. “We could always ask Peter,” he suggested, trying to coax a smile out of Stiles. He was unsurprised when it didn’t work. “My grandpa died when I was nine. I remember my mom telling us that when we died, every night was the full moon. We could run in the woods with everyone we had lost. She told us that even when we were still alive, on full moon nights, if we howled for our lost ones, we could sometimes hear them howl back.” Derek smiled. “But only if you listened very carefully.”

The moon was beginning to rise, a waning crescent moon smiling down on them like a woman on a billboard advertisement. Standing, Stiles tilted his head up to look at it. In the twilight, he looked – lost. Much smaller than Derek had ever seen him before. His wide brown eyes were wet with tears and his shoulders were slumped.

Defeat was not something that Stiles Stilinski wore well.

His eyes hardened suddenly and Stiles squared his shoulders. His jaw was clenched as he swallowed, and Derek watched the adam’s apple in his throat as it bobbed.

Then, with his eyes closed tight, Stiles tilted his head back and howled.

The long lines of his strong neck were exposed and his breath pillowed in white puffs of air. Derek’s breath lodged in his throat and threatened to choke him as he watched Stiles in awe. In his belly, Derek felt the unwanted heat of want unfurl, and he pushed it down, refused to acknowledge it. Not now; maybe never. Right now, all that mattered was this: Stiles howled and howled and howled until all of the breath had escaped from his lungs. Only then did he bow his head beneath the moon.

There was silence, and then, far away, a frog began to sing. Stiles cupped his hands over his ears, but it was just them beneath that moon – them and the frogs.

“I can’t hear my mother.”

Derek stood by Stiles side and closed his eyes. “You’re just not listening hard enough,” Derek said. “Look.” He focused, focused on everything around him. He could hear the rabbits in the brush and further out, the sound of cars on the highways. If he focused, he could probably hear the whole world, this way.

“Can you hear her?” Stiles said, and his voice was Derek’s whole world.

“She’s quiet,” he said.

“Can you hear your mom?”

Derek stilled, then nodded. “I can hear her. She’s running with – she’s running with my baby sister.” He gulped back his own tears. “She’s teaching her how to howl now, too, so that I can hear her someday too.”

“I don’t hear anything,” Stiles admitted, and when he spoke, he sounded terrified. “I can’t hear my mom.”

Derek frowned, then clenched his fist to his chest. “My ears are weak,” he said, feeling his heart race under his skin. His face heated, as though he was admitting a precious secret, when he spoke again. “So I had to learn to listen here.”

Stiles and Derek stood under the moon on Claudia’s grave, the weight of Derek’s jacket nothing compared to the weight of the world that Stiles carried around on his shoulders. His arms were limp at his side, and so Derek lowered his hand beside him. Their fingers tangled and the held on tightly to one another, anchoring each other to a too cruel world.

“Hi mom.” Stiles whispered, and the pulse in his palms slowed beneath Derek’s fingertips.

“This is Derek Hale.”

Stiles hand tightened around Dereks, and Derek’s mouth went dry.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Derek said, his face illuminated by the moon, but what he didn’t say was even more important.

Thank you for your son.

He may have imagined it, but in the distance, past the highways and the city and the hills, Derek almost thought that he heard the sound of a howl, both human and faint.

Thank you, he thought again, and then out loud, “Thank you.”

Stiles hand was steady in his.

“No,” Stiles said. “Thank you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Are you looking at the stars tonight?  
> Aren’t they beautiful all blue and bright?  
> I know it’s hard for you too  
> but if it’s OK I will hold on tight  
> To the dream of being with you on this night  
> Knowing what I know about you  
> Well it makes it feel well it makes it feel alright


End file.
